


we have come to our real work

by be_themoon



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, downer ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-16
Updated: 2011-03-16
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_themoon/pseuds/be_themoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. When Peter and Lucy hunt the White Stag, Susan and Edmund are in Archenland. Things go downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we have come to our real work

Susan and Edmund are in Archenland when the news comes, having just signed the final draft of the new treaty with King Lune.

They're on their way to the Cair within an hour, two of the Royal Guard their only escort.

There's no news when they get there, and no one to greet them.

*

Susan, Lucy thinks, would drink with Peter, and they'd end up falling asleep together, forgetting everything for one blissful moment. Edmund would be able to pull him together, keep the wounds from gaping so openly. She can do neither, only watch as he tries to drown himself in the whiskey he found in the Professor's study.

When he offers her some, she sits down and upends the bottle, draining it, and then considers.

"More," she says, holding out her hand, and they drink together, wearing their wounds like a matched set in a horrible dream.

This will all be over when we wake up, she tells herself, but she doesn't pinch her arm.

Their mother arrives the next morning, frantic.

They have nothing to tell her.

*

Susan blows her horn, but there is no answer. She winds it at sunrise, at sunset, at high noon. She tries it at all three on every day of magic, at the solstices, the new moons, the full moons. For months all Narnia hears it, and then she stops.

They hang Rhindon in the small treasury, with Peter's shield beside it, Lucy's cordial and dagger facing it across the room. Susan leaves her bow and quiver in the treasury, but she hides her horn, and Edmund doesn't find out where. They seal the door with magic and don't go back.

Six months after Peter and Lucy vanish, an ambassador calls Susan High Queen. She spends half the night crying in Edmund's arms but takes up the title with the aplomb and dignity she always has. Only Edmund sees the way her knuckles whiten when they call her it.

The Telmarines invade within the year.

*

Peter's nightmares get worse after he's sent back to school against his mother's wishes. No one can soothe him, and when his roommate tries Peter comes within a hair's-breadth of breaking his neck.

For the first few days, he hears Susan's horn often, but within three weeks it stops sounding, and he has not even that small comfort.

Technically he's not an alcoholic. Wine here isn't really strong enough to get him drunk.

*

When Edmund wakes up, everything is dark around him. He can hear shallow breathing beside him, and the echoing ring of Susan's horn like a remembered ringing in his ears.

"Susan," he whispers, and stretches his hand into the darkness, finding hers. It's smaller than he remembers.

"I'm all right, Edmund," she says. "I shouldn't be, though. We were dying."

"I was dead," Edmund points out wryly. "And I think a few years older." He looks upwards. "Stars," he says. "Let's wait for dawn and see where we are."

They sit in the darkness and wait.

*

Peter can feel the earth shifting beneath his feet, and the air burns into his lungs with all the cruelty he has come to expect of Narnia.

He looks along the beach and then up to the cliff, holding Lucy's hand tight in his own, and his heart stops because up there on the cliff, framed by the blue sky and the white ruins, are two people who have been waiting for him to come home.

He runs, and Lucy follows.

The two people wait, as they have for a lifetime or two.

*

They don't know what to say, so they pretend this is all normal, but when the first forced chatter dies down, Edmund squares his shoulders.

"Peter, I think someone blew Susan's horn and it called us back. All of us," he adds, looking around the circle. "Susan and I died however long ago it was when the Telmarines invaded."

Peter just nods, his eyes drinking them in.

"Peter," Edmund says, and his voice breaks. "I don't think Susan and I have long. The horn's magic can't keep us here forever." Peter bites his lip, anger and loss in his eyes, and then all four of them are hugging, a mass of tangled arms and limbs and bittersweet joy.

*

"I won't survive this battle," Edmund says as he sharpens his sword, not able to look up.

"I know," Peter says. "I figured it out too. Once the battle is won-"

"-Susan and I are released," Edmund says.

They don't have anything else to say.

*

Lucy doesn't have to look at Peter to know that he won't survive the battle either. None of them will, she thinks, and is surprised to find she can think it calmly.

They belong together.

*

Caspian finds the first body five minutes after he starts looking. Susan's lips are bright red with blood, her hair matted and her eyes closed. A mace has crushed her chest, and Caspian knows even before he checks that there is no pulse.

"My lord!" someone calls, and Caspian follows the voice to where two great cats hold the last guard over the body of Edmund, his throat slit and his eyes closed.

They find Lucy in the river, carried over in the last rush to battle the remains of the Telmarine army.

They find Peter last, four arrows in his chest and at least five other wounds on him. His hair is crowned in blood, but like the others, his face looks at peace.


End file.
